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Where to find it: Main → Shipping → Shipments — Open in OTO ↗
This is the operational heart of shipping: turning routed orders into booked shipments, getting the paperwork printed, having the carrier collect, and following the parcel until it arrives — or doesn’t.

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What this function covers

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Creating shipments

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The box and weight step

Select one or more orders on Shipments → Pending Orders and choose Create Shipment, then either With OTO Rates or With My Rates depending on whose contract you are shipping under. First comes the parcel. Pick a predefined Box Type or type Box Dimensions and Weight directly; Add Another Box handles a multi-package shipment. COD is set on the same step, as a plain question: Collect payment from the receiver on delivery (COD)?
The box and weight step of shipment creation

Fig. 1 — Origin and destination come from the order. Note Package Weight and Volumetric Weight calculated side by side as you type.

Both weights, before you commitThe screen shows actual and volumetric weight together — here 1.00 kg against 0.90 — so you can see which one the carrier will bill on before choosing. The product’s own warning is the honest version: “Enter an accurate weight to avoid unexpected extra charges.” Under-declaring does not save money; it moves the cost to an invoice line you will argue about later in reconciliation.

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Choosing a carrier

Show Shipping Prices returns every carrier that can serve the shipment. Each row carries rather more than a price:
The carrier options list with prices and estimates

Fig. 2 — Seven options from 12.00 to 16.00, spanning lockers, PUDO branches and door-to-door. A carrier whose connection still needs checking shows Verify in place of Select.

Drop-off is a real option, not an edge caseThree of the seven options here never visit your door: the parcel goes to a locker or a carrier branch and the customer collects it. Drop-off and PUDO are usually the cheapest rows on this screen, and for a merchant shipping from a store they remove the pickup window entirely.

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Bulk creation

The same flow runs across a selection of orders. Under With My Rates, one control sets the carrier for all orders and each order can still be overridden individually, with its own Box Count and Box Weight. A running Total Cost sits at the foot before you commit.
Bulk shipment creation on your own rates

Fig. 3 — Each order shows its route and can be removed from the batch. The default per-order value is Automatic Shipment — leave it and shipping automation picks the carrier.

The default is the interesting oneAutomatic Shipment means you do not have to choose at all: the rules decide, order by order, and you are simply confirming the batch. Setting a carrier here overrides the rules for these orders only — useful for a one-off, and a habit worth noticing if it becomes routine, because it means the rules are wrong.

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Specialised shipping services

Not every parcel is a box going next-day. OTO carries the service type through to the carrier so that specialised handling is booked as such, not discovered at pickup. Services include same-day and 4-hour delivery, express, cold delivery, heavy & bulky, international, and the PUDO and locker options above. Because each carrier service is its own connection — see Carrier integration — a cold-chain service carries its own coverage and its own SLA, separate from the same carrier’s standard offering.

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Cash on delivery

COD is booked as part of the shipment, with the amount to collect passed to the carrier. The money collected then flows into reconciliation, where it is matched against what the carrier actually remits. COD orders are also the ones most worth protecting upstream — see the COD confirmation and address verification checks in Pre-fulfillment checks.

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Scheduled shipment creation for delivery slots

An order with a delivery slot should not become a shipment the moment it arrives — it should become one shortly before the slot, so the carrier’s clock starts when the delivery is actually due. OTO creates these shipments automatically ahead of the slot rather than on receipt. Slots themselves are configured per carrier; see Order fulfillment.

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Asynchronous label generation

Labels are generated in the background rather than holding the screen. On a bulk creation of several hundred shipments that is the difference between a usable interface and a frozen one — the operator carries on working while the air waybills are produced.

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Documents

From Shipments → Awaiting Pickup, select orders and open the Print menu. Eight documents are available:
The Print menu on the Awaiting Pickup tab

Fig. 4 — The toolbar also carries Orders, OTO PACK, Notify and Tools, and each tab shows a live count.

Air waybills are available in English, Turkish and Arabic, and the templates themselves are configured under Printing Templates.
One bad order stops the batchIf any selected order has a problem with its air waybill, the batch will not print. Find the problematic order, deselect it, and print the rest — then deal with that one through the shipment error logs.
Multi-package shipmentsEach package needs its own air waybill. A shipment created with a package count of 1 produces a single label, so set the count correctly at creation rather than reprinting afterwards.

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The pickup list

Delivery Company Pickup List is what the carrier’s driver signs. It lists Order Number, Shipment ID, Boxes Count and Delivery Company, with Total Packages and Total Order at the foot, and carries signature blocks for both sides. A Language selector sits above the preview.
The Delivery Company Pickup List

Fig. 5 — Boxes counted as well as orders — which is the number that matters when a parcel from a multi-box shipment goes missing.

Get it signedThe moment of handover is where liability moves and where a dispute is least recoverable if nobody recorded it. A signed pickup list costs thirty seconds and settles the question of whether the carrier ever had the parcel.

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Pickup and tracking

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Pickup requests

Pickup requests are raised automatically when shipments are created, or manually when a collection needs arranging outside the routine. Every request is logged at Settings → Logs → System Logs → Pick up Request Logs, with OTO Order ID, Order ID, Created Date, Shipment Number, Delivery Company, Message, Status and LOG Status. The Message column carries the carrier’s own response, which is usually where the answer is when a pickup did not happen.
Pick up Request Logs

Fig. 6 — One of six log types on this screen — alongside Shipment Error Logs, Webhook Error Logs, Inventory Sync Logs, Product Sync Logs and Route Automation Logs.

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Real-time tracking with one status set

Each carrier has its own status vocabulary. OTO maps them all onto one set, so a shipment on Aramex and a shipment on SMSA both read the same way — and any rule, report or customer message built on those statuses works across every carrier without a special case. An order’s full history opens as Status History, with two tabs: Order Status History and Packing Status History. Each row records the Date, Delivery Company, Shipment ID, a Description, the Location and the normalised Status.
Status History for a shipment

Fig. 7 — A real journey: information received, SMS sent to receiver, departed terminal, arrived destination, held for pickup, arrived terminal, then an undelivered attempt. The description carries the carrier’s own words — here, waiting for a corrected delivery address.

Read the description, not just the statusThe normalised status tells you what happened; the carrier’s description tells you why. “The shipment is on hold as we are waiting for the correct delivery address” is a fixable problem, and the fix is upstream in address correction — not in chasing the carrier.
Shipments in flight sit under Shipments → Currently Shipping and move to Delivered on completion. The same statuses drive the customer-facing tracking page and messages in Customer Notification.

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Failed delivery management

A failed delivery attempt is the most expensive routine event in the operation, and the one most often left to sort itself out. OTO records the number of attempts and the reason each one failed, and can trigger messages automatically when an attempt fails — so the customer is asked to fix the address or arrange a time while the parcel is still with the carrier, rather than after it has been returned. Failure reasons are drawn from your own list under Settings → Advanced → Reason Settings, which means attempts can be counted and compared by reason rather than by free text.

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When it goes wrong

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Cancelling and re-booking

A shipment can be cancelled any time before the carrier collects it. On Shipments → Awaiting Pickup, select it and choose Orders → Cancel Shipment. The order returns to Pending Orders with the status Shipment Canceled, from where a new shipment can be created with the same carrier or a different one. That last point is what makes the feature valuable rather than merely corrective: if a carrier is running late on pickups or has stopped serving a city, the affected orders can be pulled back and re-booked elsewhere without re-keying anything.
Two things to knowCancellation cannot be undone — a shipment cancelled in error has to be recreated. And refunds of shipping fees vary by carrier, from immediate to as long as 30 days.

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Limits and prerequisites